Any single-qubit unitary operation or quantum gate can be considered a rotation. Typical experimental implementations of single-qubit gates involve two or three fixed rotation axes, and up to three rotation steps. Here we show that, if the rotation a
xes can be tuned arbitrarily in a fixed plane, then two rotation steps are sufficient for implementing a single-qubit gate, and one rotation step is sufficient for implementing a state transformation. The results are relevant for exchange-only logical qubits encoded in three-spin blocks, which are important for universal quantum computation in decoherence free subsystems and subspaces.
Quantum phase transitions (QPTs) in qubit systems are known to produce singularities in the entanglement, which could in turn be used to probe the QPT. Current proposals to measure the entanglement are challenging however, because of their nonlocal n
ature. Here we show that a double quantum dot coupled locally to a spin chain provides an alternative and efficient probe of QPTs. We propose an experiment to observe a QPT in a triple dot, based on the well-known singlet projection technique.
